OrderPaper commends NEITI on EITI assessment

OrderPaper Advocacy Initiative (OAI) commends the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) on scaling a recent global assessment by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) with high scores.

OAI is particularly pleased that Nigeria scored an overall 72 points in the international assessment, which focused on three major thematic areas – transparency, stakeholders’ engagement and outcomes and impacts.

That Nigeria, through the admirable efforts of NEITI, recorded an impressive score of 92 points on outcomes and impacts speaks to the agency’s conscientious and diligent work in promoting openness, accountability and civic enlightenment in the country’s extractive industries.

However, OAI notes that the 52.5 points recorded on stakeholders’ engagements in the assessment calls for improved use of NEITI reports by civic actors and the general public. We, therefore, use this medium to enjoin the President Bola Tinubu administration to make haste to constitute the National Stakeholders Working Group (NSWG) of NEITI so as to galvanize uptake of plans and activities by the management of the agency to keep raising the bar of transparency and accountability in the petroleum, and solid mineral sectors of the country. In that way, Nigeria can improve on her current score of 71.5 on implementing transparency driven reforms in the extractive industry by the next assessment due in 2026.

Overall, OAI believes that NEITI’s outing in the 11-month-long assessment is a notable testament to the agency’s strong commitment to fostering openness and accountability within the extractive industries.

OAI, therefore, commends Dr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, NEITI’s Executive Secretary, the management team and the staff of the agency for the achievement. We urge them to scale up engagements with civil society actors making an impact in the extractive space, especially with respect to dissemination and making use of NEITI reports to mount needed public pressure on political authorities, regulators and indeed all entities (private and public) in the extractive sector to implement recommendations contained in its annual audits and other specialized publications.

Being a key partner with NEITI, OrderPaper will continue to deploy its revamped RemTrack platform to increase dissemination of and civic engagements with the audits and publications even to the grassroots, especially host communities that continue to bear the brunt of extraction, production and processing of petroleum and solid minerals across the country.

OrderPaper Advocacy Initiative is a non-profit registered as an incorporated trustee in November 2017 to embark on policy-related engagements and interventions, especially in the legislative space that expands the frontiers for good governance and deepens democratic practice(s). OAI uses civic tech to amplify the voices and participation of under-served and under-represented groups to promote inclusion in leadership and political decision-making. OAI has implemented several national projects, programmes and activities in the broad thematic areas of Transparency, Accountability and Good Governance (TAGG) with deliberate mainstreaming of Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI). OAI has etched its footprints in the extractive sector, including the advocacy and enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), 2021, and design and development of RemTrack as a civic tech tool for intervening in the dynamics of the energy transition as it relates to the extractive sector. OAI is a key non-state actor in the implementation of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in Nigeria.